Blogging about Professional Blogs- Blog 2

March 18, 2013

Off the Record- http://offtherecord.archivists.org/
This blog is through the SAA Jackie Dooley, who serves as president of the SAA, is the main contributor. There are two other contributors though Dooley has supplied all the posts for the year so far.
The tagline is “Join the Conversation with SAA leaders.” Under the About this Blog tag is the description, “Off the Record is an informal communication channel on which conversations can take place about ongoing SAA activities and issues, as well other topics of broad interest to archivists. We want to both highlight such topics and spark discussion” (Dooley, 2013).

Issues Discussed
There are not very many issues discussed in the blog. Most of the posts are about SAA news with some stories of interest pertaining to the field. One of the non-SAA related posts has to do with the Georgia Archives. Historians, genealogists, archivists, librarians, and other Georgia citizens came together to fight for increased funding and the transfer of responsibility of the archives from the Secretary of State to the University System of Georgia (Those Amazing Georgia Activists Keep Fighting Dooley, 2013). The university is working hard to research and address the issues that come with transferring responsibility of the Georgia Archives (Dooley, 2013). Thee SAA has also been providing input and will submit a letter highlighting the issues they feel are important for the university to consider (Dooley, 2013). While this post is not directly related to the SAA it is about something with which they are involved.
The only other post that is not directly related to the SAA is titled “Should a Legal Right to “Archival Privilege” be established?” The post stemmed from a SAA council discussion in January 2013. This post is actually very relevant to what we have been discussing in class, privacy and ethics. The Boston College Library was served with a subpoena in May of 2011 by a Federal District Court to turn over closed oral histories because they were believed to contain information relevant to a murder investigation in Northern Ireland. There have been many appeals and a request to review that case is pending before the U.S. Supreme Court (Dooley, 2013). The basic question pertaining to this case is “how much confidentiality can an archivist legally guarantee to a donor” (Dooley, 2013)? This is an interesting post and if you have time I encourage you to visit the site and read it.

Personal Observations
There are not very many posts in this blog, but this is understandable as the contributors are all busy professionals. On average, there are about two posts per month. This really is a blog about the SAA with a little bit of related news included. The posts are also short and to the point so busy professionals, and students can read them quickly.

What I Learned
I learned more about SAA from a non-official perspective, “off the record.” This would be a good site to read about SAA news and current events.